Laos

Well Laos was so interesting we couldn't help overstay our planned 3 weeks a bit. Cambodia is also proving way too interesting for the two weeks we'd planned but hopefully we'll still end up with some time for Vietnam before we head to New Zealand Jan. 13th!

Laos written on Nov. 16th:

Looking out over the Mekong towards Thailand:

The morning after arriving in Houy Xai, we took the bus to a small town in the north, Muang Sing, which is being developed as a jumping off point for treks into a large national park and rural minority villages. In Laos the bus rides are more like India as there is lots to see out the windows and they're not nearly as "polished" trips (though many of the roads are better, seats sometimes recline, honking is used just for saying “I'm coming around the corner” on windy mountain roads and they drive on the right side of the road here - haven't seen that in a while!).

Baggage stored in the aisle:

In Muang Sing we experienced the dilemma of whether or not to participate in a guided trek. We wanted to see some wildlife/birds and a guide might be able to help with that as well as giving us more information about the plants of the region. I also was curious about whether a homestay in a village would give us more of a feeling for the local cultures than we can get by walking through villages on our own. And Laos is a poor country and many of the tour companies are putting some of the money earned into projects to benefit the villages visited. But the high cost (for our minimal budget) and the difficulty of determining the quality of the guide/tour outweighed our curiosity and we opted for renting bikes for the day and biking out around several nearby villages on our own. Later we talked to people who had done tours and some sounded quite good while others not at all, so it would have taken some time to find people who could recommend a specific tour. And it was fun to get out into the countryside and to navigate our way over small roads that were often just paths with a minimal map and compass. At one point we met a German couple who were trying to walk to one of the villages and I found it comical when the man complained that there weren't any signs at the places where the road/path split. In a place where many people are illiterate and they know where the roads/paths go anyway, signs aren't very useful! And perhaps they don't want tourists traipsing through their villages. It is a strange feeling (invasive) to walk through, say a few “Sabadees” (hello) and take some pictures. Machiel doesn't like it at all, yet my curiosity wins out over my discomfort. Also I associate visiting villages with my experiences in Morocco when I was in the Peace Corps. Then it didn't feel invasive, but I could speak the language a bit and I could see that I provided the people there with some entertainment and in some cases even an opportunity to feel proud of their way of life through my interest and appreciation. However, I can empathize a bit with the people in the villages if I remember how annoying it was to try biking in Amsterdam through streets with tourists walking all over the street, and that's a big city where it's also possible to protect one's life from the tourists' curious eyes. So the mixed feelings remain and in our day of biking around the villages I took very few pictures as a result, which of course I regretted by the time we got back to the hotel.

 An abandoned hut in the sugar cane fields where we stopped for lunch and midday shade:

Gate of an Akha village:

The air was quite hazy here due to all the burning of the rice straw after the harvest:

Harvested rice:

View from our hotel balcony. These tractors also functioned as plows and rotortillers:

Temple under construction:

So the next day I went to the morning market in Muang Sing and was a shameless annoying tourist hunting down pictures of people in their traditional outfits. In India people were very happy to be photographed (some even requesting it themselves). However, here it is clear that most people do not like it and everyone I have asked has said no.

Live cockroaches, frogs and bats for sale (we were struck by how little wildlife we saw in Laos - especially the lack of birds - it seems that hunting has seriously depleted populations):

I never figured out what this berry like thing was:

I think this was a flower:

A Tai Dam woman:

Lao-Lao (homemade rice whisky):

A Yao woman:

An Akha woman:

We also enjoyed getting to taste more Laos food here. The sticky rice magically sticks together but not to ones' hands and seems to be more filling than regular rice. Also the “jeouw” dips that one eats with it are less spicy than Thai food and delicious.

Next we headed to Nong Khiaw where there was a lovely bridge and view of the nearby mountains.

Gasoline is sold in these nifty hand crank pumps alongside roads and even alongside "regular" gas station pumps:

From there we took a boat (like the boats shown above) 1 hour up the Nam Ou river to a village accessible only by boat. Here they have a cell phone tower but generator powered electricity only from 6-9:30. We never did find out whether there was town consensus to all turn off their generators at the same time or another reason for this curfew of sorts. The village has become quite a hot spot for tourists and there are many bamboo bungalows and riverside restaurants. Nonetheless, the real village with people making noodles, building boats, repairing fishing nets,etc. is just a few buildings away and it is a beautiful and relaxed spot. Once again instead of lying back in the hammocks all day we went walking out through rice fields where we got to see all the various stages of the rice harvesting and also visited two villages. We really got a nice view of how they are sustaining themselves with gardening, rice crops, hunting, fishing and gathering from the forest. It was fun to have many of our questions answered as we went. For example, our first day there we took a brief walk through the main village and saw people carrying large fans and wondered what they were for. On our walk through the rice fields we saw how these fans were used to blow away the loose husks (chaf) from the rice.

Making noodles:

Man walking back to town with gathered plants from the forest:

We saw much planting of riverbed gardens now that the dry season is here and the riverbed thus exposed:

He had just caught this grebelike bird and was reloading his looong barreled gun with gun powder:

Wetting bamboo strips to use for tying cut rice bundles together:

A hackey sack version of volleyball played with a woven rotan ball:

Transporting rice down to the Nam Ou river (through fish trap dams):

Cell phones for sale in the market:

Tobacco:

A different kind of banana:

It was also in these villages that we first encountered visible evidence of America's “secret war” on Laos. From 1965 to 1973 the USA carpet bombed the country. Many of the people in this area spent these years hiding in caves in the large limestone mountains. We went to one of these caves but my flashlight was too weak for the overpowering darkness and we didn't venture inside. We saw bomb casings being used as benches, planters, railings and curbs for a washing area/pump (see above pictures for two examples). It is an uncomfortable feeling to be interacting with people who were alive during this horrible and senseless devastation and know that my government caused it. According to the Lonely Planet, the USA continues to spend huge amounts of money (2008- 30 million/year) on recovering the bones of MIA soldiers here which also seems a scandalous waste of money not to mention totally futile mission (though I haven't checked yet to see if it's still the case).

From Nong Khiaw we took a long boat all the way down the Nam Ou, to the Mekong and down to Luang Prabang. This took all day though the boat was motoring for just 6 hours. Small wooden seats were tough on the behind but it was a beautiful trip and a fun change from buses.

rapids:

Our boat - we had to get out and walk a bit due to shallow water:

 Mining for gold maybe:

 On the Mekong:

Arrival in Luang Prabang:

Now we are taking a few days in Luang Prabang to wander this UNESCO world heritage town at a slower pace than is our habit. We are staying with friends of Machiel's brother and it has been wonderful to stay in a real home and have “real conversations” instead of the traveler “where have you been/where are you going?” fare. We are definitely on a tourist circuit here, bumping into people whom we saw in other towns. This didn't happen to us in India, though it also wasn't high tourist season when we were there.

Can you guess what these kids are doing?

Sticky rice being dried for later eating (just one of many different foods we saw being dried):

Man making fishing net (note the flags - Laos is a communist country):

"Gambling" for soft drinks at a mini fair:

Each monastery has at least one amazing racing boat:

Offerings to the spirits protecting the house (seen in businesses and houses). We've seen these in every country since Malaysia and it is fun to see the different styles and offerings (some get just garlic and water while others get pepsi or beer):

Finally captured a picture of someone using a hard hat as a helmet. We saw this in India too:

Looking over the Mekong at sunset and watching them try to squeeze in yet one more boat at the moorings:

6am alms giving of sticky rice to the monks. This awoke more conflicting feelings as this tradition that occurs everyday all over Laos (and Cambodia we've now seen) has become a bit of a tourist zoo in Luang Prabang. It was hard to be a part of this intrusion on an amazingly powerful and beautiful tradition, yet it was also too photogenic a scene to resist photographing...

A day trip of biking about 70km (including a very large hill) out to Kouang Si waterfall (the water was quite refreshing) and a bear sanctuary for rescued bears (they are captured for their bile which is used in traditional medicine). Asian black bear foraging for lunch which the staff hid around their enclosure:

Noodle factory I think:

Dec. 6th:
Our next destination was Phonsovan which involved a 8ish hour bus ride on the windiest of roads we've so far traveled. The bus was full of vomiting Loatians though luckily the bus "manager" (ticket collector/baggage handler) anticipated this and had handed out plastic bags. we had already encountered this on bus rides in the north so weren't very surprised.

It was interesting to be in a different region. Here the hills are mainly grassland with some pine trees and while we assumed this was due to deforestation (there are many lumber trucks in the area), we were told it has been like this for hundreds of years. This was an area that was heavily bombed during the secret war and our guest house showed a very informative documentary called "Bombies" about cluster bombs that left us feeling quite terrible. Again we rented bikes and biked 10 km out to one of the Plains of Jars sites - a field of 250 large stone jars that archeologists have not been able to determine the origins of or definitively date (they estimate 2,000 years old). The red and white markers showing where UXO (unexploded ordinances - bombs) had been removed and where it was thus safe to walk were another solemn reminder of this ever present danger for the people living here.

Bomb craters dot the hillsides:

From Phonsovan we headed to the capital, Vientiane, which was our least favorite place in Laos. The fact that the budget hotels were all full by the time we got into town, that I had a 24hour stomach flu of sorts, and that the tuk tuk ride out to the bus station cost 60,000 kip ($7.50 which everywhere else in Laos cost us 20,000 - why do they build the bus stations 4-8km outside of town??) may have led us to not give it a fair chance. In fact we didn't actually do any sight seeing and saw very little of the city. No pictures.

Nice views of the mountains between Phonsovan and Vientiane:

We continued on south stopping for a night in Tha Khaek and then Pakse just to break up the journey. Many tourists take night buses to cover this distance but we prefer to get to see the landscapes we're passing through. It was hard not stopping to explore any of this central Laos area as there were plenty of interesting places (according to the guide book) to visit, but we knew we were running out of time if we were to keep to our schedule.



Fancy bus parked at a reststop. We saw a lot of these in Thailand:

We spent 2 nights in Champasak though so that we could spend a day visiting the Khmer temple ruins from the 11th-13th century, Wat Phu Champasak, that lie at the base of an unusually shaped mountain. This was a Hindu temple and dedicated to Shiva due to the shape of the mountain. It was a wonderful connecting link between India, Laos and Cambodia and the museum at the site taught us things about Hinduism and archeology that we wished we'd known in India. I happened to be wearing the clothes I bought in India on this day which made the Indians who were supervising a restoration project there quite happy and they gladly answered our questions about the site.

View from the temple out over the palace ruins, water reservoirs and the Mekong in the distance:

Krishna killing his uncle:

Ferry over the Mekong to find a bus heading south on the main highway. We almost took this ferry but it was taking too long to fill up and leave:

So we took this one:

 

Then it was on to the Four Thousand Islands (many of the islands are sandbars) - our last stop in Laos. We spent one night on the largest island Don Khong where we had the opportunity to have a look (from the outside) at a Lao wedding and I woke up early to visit the local market. We also found out that they would be having their boat races a week later - something to add to a growing list feeding our "wish-we-could-do-it-all-itis".

We stayed at this old teak house now guest house:

 

Then we spent two nights on a smaller island, Don Kon, where we saw several water falls, one of which, Khone Phapheng, is supposedly the largest (by volume of water) in Southeast Asia, but we found it to be less powerful than Tak Somphamit. This island has become quite a tourist destination and when we left we were packed into a boat (so many of us that the boat was taking on water and had to be bailed as we crossed over to the mainland) and later a pick-up truck with quite a few other tourists as we were "herded off" to the bus to Cambodia.

Old French locomotive:

 

Tak Somphamit (note fish traps):

 

Khone Phapheng:

The border crossing and bus trip to Kratie, our first stop in Cambodia went smoothly, though I was quite annoyed by the corruption of a $1 fee for a health check (which consisted of us paying the money and them giving us a yellow piece of paper) and $3 for the stamping of a passport (first on exiting Laos and then upon entering Cambodia). Unfortunately we didn't read the online travel advice about how to avoid paying these fees until after the fact. We are currently in Siem Reap and as I said at the beginning, regretting that we have so little time here.

 Border crossing: